I’ve been dealing with a large copier manufacturer – a household name in copiers. They are a nightmare from hell. Their service is dismal and they find endless ways of charging us extra when we call for things that should have been part of a normal maintenance program.

Recently one of our copiers went off contract. We’d been paying just under $400. dollars a month plus usage fees. They told us we could just continue to pay the monthly fee and usage fees while we were deciding how we wanted to proceed. After a few months we were ready to discuss options. They suggested that we could sign a contract to pay $0. dollars a month plus usage fees. Excuse me? They didn’t bother to mention this when the contract ended? They continued to collect the full monthly fee from us as though they weren’t blatantly picking our pockets.

Even when functional, the copy machine remains one of the greatest sources of frustration in the office.

Now we probably don’t need that copier at all – the manufacturer has agreed to pick up the machine for free – yay! Not so fast! As is their usual MO they will charge us an exorbitant fee for cancelling a $0. charge contract! Nothing short of highway robbery.

This company has a few sales reps who are automatons and a few who seem like decent folks – unfortunately they’re not given any leeway to try to keep their customers satisfied – either that or they’re just lame. They just keep adding fees on top of fees and telling us we can’t get what we want – ever!

During our recent office move they quoted us a sizeable chunk of cash to move our two machines a few miles. We asked our brand new and very promising sales rep if he could get them to lower the cost at all (we’d been told that many copier companies will provide a move of this magnitude free of charge – as a service to their customers) and after several days he proudly announced that he had a way of lowering the cost to us – ‘move some of it yourself’ was his solution. Gee thanks.

My colleague suggested that she would try to get the $0. contract cancelled without incurring additional fees. She would make another attempt at dealing directly with their customer care line. I was loathe to point out the misnomer – experience tells us she was about to encounter their customer ‘don’t care’ line! Sometimes you just have to face it for what it is!